The Dartmouth student newspaper at Dartmouth College has put together a buzzworthy special issue spotlighting the “once-taboo subject” of sexual violence within higher education. Called “A Campus Facing Violence,” the issue purports on the front page to explore “the lives affected by sexual assault, the policy proposals that could shift the landscape and a college in flux.”

Dartmouth editors decided to publish this issue in place of the paper’s typical Green Key issue, which is created annually each spring in honor of a traditional party weekend at the Ivy League school.

As executive editor Stephanie McFeeters shares, “Sexual assault is a topic that has dominated campus discourse this past year, fueled largely by a Clery Act complaint filed last May, a Title IX investigation launched independently by the Education Department last summer and a March trial of a sophomore who was found not guilty of raping a female student in her dorm room.

Our pages [this past year] were full of articles and op-eds about assault and the efforts being taken to prevent it, yet somehow we felt our coverage didn’t go deep enough. We decided to devote an entire issue to the topic, attempting to look at it from all angles. . . . Most of these were things we’d touched upon before, but never with such focus and depth. Our staff put a great deal of time and thought into it, and we’re very proud of the result.”

The result is a 24-page editorial tour de force. Edited by Charles Rafkin and Min Kyung Jeon with oversight by McFeeters and editor-in-chief Lindsay Ellis, the issue draws attention to a topic that continues to “dominate campus dialogue” and dispels the misconception that it is “inconceivable that a problem as severe as sexual assault could exist in the college’s idyllic setting.”

The most compelling essay in the issue is an anonymous first-person account of a Dartmouth student’s sexual assault, the subsequent emotional anguish she experienced and the support provided by the school in helping her heal and handling her case. Unlike many sexual violence tales told by student victims in recent semesters, it ends on a note of hope and offers gratitude to college officials.

“Dartmouth, thank you for hearing me, respecting me and believing me. When I walk around campus today I smile and I look around — not to look out for my perpetrator, but to admire our beautiful campus. I’m not afraid anymore. When I speak, I hear a chorus of campus allies behind my voice. Knowing my perpetrator is far away brings me relief, yes. But the knowledge that I spoke and somebody heard is even more powerful. Writing my statement, being supported by my dean and my [Sexual Assault Awareness Program] coordinator and my friends, hearing the sound of my voice telling my story — these are the things that have rebuilt me. After I was assaulted I felt that I would never be in control again. Now I am strong.”

The narrative, larger tone and chosen headline differentiate it most directly from a Harvard University student letter that went viral in late March. Published in The Harvard Crimson, the first-person essay outlines “the university’s decision to do . . . nearly nothing to help [the student] recover from what she describes as a devastating [sexual assault] that still haunts her a year later.” That letter — which earned national media attention upon its publication and online posting — is headlined “Dear Harvard: You Win.” The piece in this special issue, by contrast, carries the headline “Dear Dartmouth: Thank You.”

In the brief Q&A below, three Dartmouth editors discuss the challenges of putting together an in-depth issue on sexual violence and recount the story behind the “Dear Dartmouth: Thank You” essay.

Q: What were the challenges of creating and completing this issue?

Charles Rafkin, one of two editors in charge of the issue: There were a few logistical challenges that we faced. First, rather than pepper administrators with five or more interview requests, we decided to have two reporters host one joint interview of key administrators. That required the reporters to understand each article’s tone and challenges (with guidance from each article’s lead reporter, of course). We’re lucky to have had two extremely diligent reporters, Sera Kwon and Sera McGahan, step up for this effort. You’ll notice that they receive contribution credit for a number of articles as a result.

Additionally, we’re a paper with a small staff, and we could not pause daily production to accommodate this project. Our reporters had to balance the long-term needs of tracking down sources and preparing lengthy articles with the business of reporting for a college daily. We also had to prepare a storyboard and build an editing schedule keeping in mind that our reporters were writing, in some cases, several other articles each week.

Another major challenge — and this is by no means unique to our project — is that people at Dartmouth are very reticent to discuss sexual assault with the school paper. You’ll notice that there are some articles where 10 or 15 people declined to comment or did not return requests for comment. There remains a good deal of distrust of The Dartmouth on this campus. Due to our reporters’ persistence, we were able to track down many, many sources on-the-record, but it was certainly tough to do so.

Finally, because the issue is so charged, we ran the risk of losing our readers from the opening graf if we did not make our balanced approach very explicit. But we also struggled with thinking through where we might be injecting some “false balance” into our reporting. If there are truths about sexual assault at Dartmouth, we need to report them, whether or not our readers agree. This challenge came up in particular in the issue’s centerfold, “The Sway of Social Spaces,” which deals with two issues that most people on campus feel strongly about: sexual assault and the Greek system. Our reporters were initially concerned that the article came down hard enough on the Greek system that some readers would turn elsewhere. Ultimately, I’m particularly proud of the balance that article strikes. Even if there are some hard truths contained there, I think the piece is grabbing enough that people won’t look away.

Min Kyung Jeon, one of two editors in charge of the issue: As Charlie mentioned, scheduling interviews with administrators was a lengthy process that entailed multiple confirmation emails as well as difficult, back-and-forth communication with media relations officers for the dean and the president of the college, who understandably had extremely limited availability. We actually had three separate groups of centralized administrator interviews: the first with deans and assistant deans; the second with college president Phil Hanlon; and the third with two key sexual assault programming coordinators. Despite the initial challenge in reaching these administrators, we were fortunate to have several assiduous reporters step up for each interview, and many others volunteered to transcribe the recorded interviews afterward as well.

There was also the challenge of getting sources to speak to us more openly about sexual assault. It is such a deeply personal, painful topic that survivors often did not feel comfortable coming forward with their stories — with the exception of the extraordinary anonymous opinion piece that Lindsay [Ellis, Dartmouth EIC] secured. And even those a bit removed from the issue would shy away due to the topic’s taboo nature. Thanks to our reporters’ persistence, a good majority of the Dartmouth sources quoted in “A Campus Facing Violence” are on-the-record by phone or in person, but we had an especially hard time persuading sources at other schools to talk with us without being anonymous.

I must say that despite all these challenges, I was extremely heartened and impressed by our reporters’ diligence and commitment to the issue. Many of them conducted very detailed, complicated research for their pieces and gladly took on the dual responsibility of writing their stories for the issue and contributing to the paper’s daily production. And of course, I could not have been better supported by the constant, patient guidance of Lindsay, Stephanie and the rest of the Dartmouth senior staff.

Q: What is the story behind the publication of “Dear Dartmouth: Thank You”? And how did editors make the decision to keep the writer anonymous and to include a trigger warning at the top?

Lindsay Ellis, the paper’s editor-in-chief: The writer of the anonymous piece approached me about writing an op-ed about her experiences reporting her rape to Dartmouth as we were planning the issue. When I told her that we were producing this special issue, she was enthusiastic about including it in the project.

She initially asked about anonymity, and after speaking to other editors, I was comfortable running the piece anonymously for two main reasons. The first was that we know that most news organizations do not report the names of victims of sex crimes without their explicit consent, and we felt that this could reasonably apply to a person speaking of these experiences in a different space of the paper. Second, we go to a small school, and we felt that publishing the piece anonymously would help readers focus on her message, not who wrote it.

In terms of the trigger warning, throughout this process, we wanted to make sure we were approaching the very difficult topic of sexual violence as sensitively as possible. We included the trigger warning because to us, this included treating our readers with sensitivity, too.

Q: The tone of the issue overall strikes me as hopeful and somewhat positive. Do you agree with that assessment? And, depending, was that a purposeful push aiming to capture Dartmouth student sentiment?

Min Kyung Jeon, one of two editors in charge of the issue: I agree with your impression that it is hopeful and relatively positive. Throughout the editing process, Charlie and I felt that the stories, taken as a whole, imparted a sense that our school was moving forward in our approach to sexual violence.

People were more aware of the issue partly because of the recent string of protests condemning the prevalence of sexual assault on campus. Administrators and trustees had taken a remarkable step earlier this year to propose a zero-tolerance policy for rape. And, most significantly, there was the growing recognition among students, staff, faculty, alumni and other community members that there are still so many changes to institute to make our campus safer for everyone. Whether it be establishing a new sexual assault prevention center, mandating Movement Against Violence for students, or encouraging faculty members to undergo first-responder training for sexual assault survivors, we are giving more and more attention and empathy to the issue that deserves as much spotlight as it can get.

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he also advises The Hawk student newspaper. He is the author of Journalism of Ideas (Routledge, 2013) and maintains the student journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.

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